


challenge five

by orphan_account



Series: Summer Pornathon '14 [5]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Biphobia, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Hate Crimes, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Minor Character Death, Multi, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Summer Pornathon 2014, internalised biphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Gwen's love. (Final pairing: Morgana/Gwen; all other pairings are past/side-pairings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	challenge five

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge five, prompt 'snatch'--here for Gwen/Morgana femslash and some angst. Final pairing is Gwen/Morgana, all others are past/side-pairings. (And the Gwen/Arthur is not Gwen/Arthur in a romantic sense, which you'll realise as you read.) Please heed the warnings!
> 
> This entry (like all others) is the initial, i.e. longer, version, not the 750-max-words of summerpornathon.

(13)

Merlin was beautiful in that fey way, funny when he didn’t intend to be, and braver than he looked. His kisses were soft, and his fingers on her thighs were always gentle but wondering.

He was a crush and not a love, and they were friends first and lovers second, so when Merlin’s neck turned after a slim, pale beauty (Freya, she learned later) walked past, Gwen let him go with a smile.

*

(16)

Lance was the storm that uprooted Gwen’s life at sixteen. He was late nights watching stars, holding hands in the park, and soft kisses sighed into kiss-swollen mouths under trees.

They spent two summers of whispered love declarations and first times together, and the memory was sweet, and aching, and bitter. Aching because Lance left to teach children in Kenya for an interminable time, bitter because after Gwen said she’d wait for him, he took the decision away from her and broke up with her so she wouldn’t have to wait.

It didn’t stop hurting, even when Merlin told her that love meant not actually patronising someone.

*

(19)

When there was Arthur, she wasn’t ready for another love.

Then again, she didn’t need to be.

Arthur was arrogant, emotionally stunted, all hard angles protecting a lovely softness. He was clever, foolishly brave, and when she looked at him, Gwen thought there was nothing the sun loved more.

He also insisted on calling her Guinevere (never Gwen), and there was something about the way he froze the first time he saw Merlin that reassured Gwen that this would never happen. It was surprisingly easy not to fall in love with Arthur.

When Arthur, however, asked her to be with him, she still agreed. They kissed on the cheek, Gwen embraced him when he was sad but wouldn’t say anything, and he cooked for her. When he took her to his father for the first time, Gwen understood.

Uther was a heterosexist tyrant who would do worse than disown his son if he caught his gaze lingering on Merlin, so Gwen was a safe option. He confessed, nights later, wretched and sorry, tongue loose with alcohol, that he hadn’t meant to use her. He hadn’t meant to keep secrets.

Gwen only smiled, said, “It’s okay,” and left it at that.

She wasn’t in love with Arthur, and she was in no position to say anything about secrets.

Not when her own heart was dark with them.

*

(20)

Morgana came to live with Merlin.

She wasn’t just rebellious from her army boots, piercings and red-black tartan skirts, but her very core; she came to live with Merlin after Uther threw her out for something or other (“I told him I could wear what I like, and that he could shove his chauvinistic bullshit up his own arse”), and by extension, Gwen, too.

The first time she saw her, Gwen thought this must be what Arthur had felt the day he’d met Merlin: electrified, breathless, and threatened in all the best ways.

She still looked away, even when Morgana looked back.

*

Morgana was a fierce heart made of a worryingly self-righteous sense of justice that led to late nights in the stark light of the A&E, bloodied knuckles, dislocated shoulders, or bruised legs. She was a sharp tongue that knew better, just never cared. She was infuriating and even more stubborn than Arthur, brilliant-bright and gorgeous in green summer dresses and ridiculous hair that changed colour every three weeks. She was dangerously soft-spoken when she needed to be, knew how to play her cards, and had a mind sharper than her tongue.

She also stopped by the shop around the corner to buy a sandwich or some pastries for the homeless at the central station, and she picked up birds with broken wings and took them to the vet and paid for any necessary surgeries herself by doing a couple extra hours at the library.

She wasn’t just piercings and rainbow-coloured hair and that sleeve-tattoo she so desperately wanted; she was also the girl laying back on the grass watching the sun and the sky with bright eyes wide in simple wonder of the world.

By the time she was there, Gwen was ready for love again, and so she fell.

She fell hard, those months. Even when Morgana looked back, Gwen kept looking away. Nothing happened.

(Nothing _could_ happen.)

And if Gwen’s heart trembled, between night and dawn, when her fingers slipped down between her legs, black hair and a sly smile in mind—no one had to know.

Like no one had to know that every time Morgana turned her head, Gwen looked back.

  
*

(Gwen remembered her brother’s death clearly.

She remembered the nurses saying, “hate crime,” her father saying, “humanity.”

She remembered how her brother had loved another boy like their father had loved their mother, and, most of all, she remembered emptiness.

When she’d first glanced after a girl herself, at fourteen, panic had stilled her heart, and she’d ended up vomiting in school. When the girls had changed in the dressing rooms after PE, and when there’d been Elena with her blond curls, or Mithian with her bold gait, she’d looked away; looked at boys instead.

She’d never once cried for Elyan.)

*

Sometimes (tonight; every night) the memories overwhelmed her.

There was a party, and it was deafening; the silence inside Gwen, though, was louder. She was sitting, blank, alone in a corner. People came by to talk to her, but she never noticed; who talked to her, who held her. It was all the same.

Long into the night, then, hours of suffocation as breath later, there was a presence by her side. There was a scent that shot into Gwen’s stomach like an arrow and Gwen resurfaced as slim, wiry-strong arms went around her to support her as her legs gave out beneath her, and breath became panic. She clung to Morgana even though she didn’t want to, because she would vomit again, she knew she would. She was so single-mindedly focused on that thought that she never realised Morgana was walking them up the stairs until Gwen felt something soft at her back. Time ceased, stilled, and she stared up at her own Deftones poster.

The bed dipped. Morgana’s face appeared above hers. Blurry, white, black, and red. The red moved when Morgana spoke. “You okay?”

An exhalation against Gwen’s chin. Warm, feathery, good.

It was hard to look away, suddenly.

“I’m n-not gay,” Gwen stuttered, didn’t know why. She had to say it. She _wasn’t_.

Morgana was too close.

Gwen stared at Morgana until the blackness fled her chest and there was a burn, and she kept staring until the burn fled her chest and appeared in her eyes instead. The noose was there, drawing tighter. Before it snapped, Gwen mindlessly gripped Morgana’s wrist.

Morgana wasn’t close enough.

Gwen broke. There were words, hoarse, pleading. Hers, and she never realised. “Please, _please_ —”

Morgana hushed her with her mouth, her hands, her fingers. Trying not to feel was trying to breathe underwater: reality became an underwater world in which she moved without gills, and the only supplier of oxygen were Morgana’s hands holding her thighs apart as they quaked, was her tongue licking shockdelight around Gwen’s clit, was her finger slipping inside. Oxygen was touch, and Gwen craved it, craved it with the mad need to be marked all over when Morgana’s teeth closed around the soft flesh of Gwen’s inner thigh.

Perhaps, like this, she could stay here, belonging to Morgana, here, where there was no time, no space, only feeling.

Morgana’s mouth on hers tore a crack into the underwater bubble, leaving all the water to pour out. Morgana held her as she cried all the tears she’d never allowed herself. At last, tearless, breathless, nose against Morgana’s neck, she heard Morgana murmur, “You’ll be all right,” into the hesitant morning light.

In that moment, Gwen believed her.


End file.
